1. Crafting StructureCreating the Blueprint Chapter 4Theatre: The Lively Art Rebecca Pearson

2. The Playwright Creates blueprint for the collaborative effort which is a play Chooses Story (Subject, Focus, Purpose) Plot Structure Characters (Dialogue) Centrality? Exception: Improv Some critics: Play is only a starting point

3. Dramatic Structure Playwright crafts: Conflicts Limits Intensity Each play should have its own internal laws and its own framework, which give it shape, strength, and meaning.

4. Essentials of Structure Plot Opening Scene Exposition Action Characterizatio n Conflict Obstacles / Opposing Forces Complications Balance Crises / Climaxes

5. Climactic and Episodic Structures Intensive Extensive Originated in Greece Proliferate Focuses late in plot Subplots Exposition Juxtaposition Restricted Cumulative effect Tight Construction Ex:The Zoo Story Ex: RENT

6. Other Structures Ritual Patterns Cyclical Serial Experimental (Avant-Garde) Tableaux

7. The Sounds of Feminist Theory... linear plot is incompatible with oral narrative which unfolds according to the storytellers memory and interaction with specific listeners. Indeed one of the most distrinctive qualities of oral narrative is its tendency to enact the immediacy and tumult of experience. A storyteller may well get carried away with a detail or delve into a flashback. Instead of following the kind of sequential structure of the typical climactic plot, oral storytellers are often driven by the episodic and ever-changing dynamics of life as it unfolds from day to day. - Ruth Salvaggio

8. Orality and Literacy: the technolgizing of the wordWhat made a good epic poet was not mastery of a climactic linear plot, but was, among other things of course, first, tacit acceptance of the fact that episodic structure was the only way and the totally natural way of imagining and handling lengthy narrative, and second, possession of supreme skill in managing flashbacks and other episodic techniques. - Walter Ong

9. Empirical Analysis of Dramatic StructureIt is tradition to discuss the form of Western drama by describing its linear structure, i.e., how the sequences of the play relate to one another over time according to some unifying construct such as tension build or level of interest. Aristotle seems to have set this precedent in the Poetics by defining plot as the arrangement of the incidents (VI. 6) and devoting parts of all subsequent chapters to procedures for analyzing such arrangement This tradition can be seen in modern works on dramatic theory and, closer to actual production, in directing texts such as Dietrichs popular Play Direction (1953), which offers the Aristotle-Freytag-Matthews model in refined form including embellishments which make it resemble a scientifically respectable line graph

10. Freytags Pyramid

11. Dramatic Structure Line Graph

12. Empirical Analysis of Dramatic Structure (continued) This precision and the importance of the construct it operationalizes suggests the need to bring behavioral research methods to bear in testing its operations inductively. To what extent do individual audience members perceive the dramatic structure of a given theatrical event similarly? If this similarity of judgements exists, how does it compare to such a priori theoretical models as those in the Brander Matthews heritage? Does the production team (actors-director) analyze the tension- time configuration of a given play similarly to that of an audience as well as an a priori standard? -Gil Lazier, Douglas Zahn, Joseph Bellinghiere

13. Works Cited Lazier, Gil, Douglas Zahn, and Joseph Bellinghiere. "Empirical Analysis of Dramatic Structure." Communication Monographs 41.4 (1974): 381-90. Print. Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen, 1982. Print. Salvaggio, Ruth. The Sounds of Feminist Theory. Albany: State University of New York, 1999. Print.